As Broken Chip, Blue Mountains-based electronic producer Martyn Palmer has previously made appearances on a number of Flaming Pines compilations and New Weird Australia’s second eponymous compilation, as well as remixed the likes of Comatone and Underlapper. This latest download-only EP ‘Cold Air’ was recorded, produced and released by Palmer during the span of a single day in October of this year, and sees him completely with loops and no editing to create four tracks that lean distinctly towards the calming side of ambient. In many senses there isn’t anything here that radically marks these tracks out from one another, and in classic Eno style these four tracks add more of a subtle tonal ‘tinge’ to the room rather than really intruding in any way.
‘Note Book’ opens things as a slow veiled wash of warm drones fades into view, the interplay of harmonic layers ebbing like the slow reflection of sunlight off the surface of a pond as a sense of vague melancholia plays at the very edges. ‘New Leaves’ meanwhile sees aquatic sounding bass tones and muffled melodic notes drifting like plankton through layers of gauziness in an offering that’s almost mantra-like in its minimalism, before ‘Across The Sky’ sees things veering back towards the interweaving drone elements that opened this year, albeit with a slightly more frail and cold undercurrent lurking in the background. Think of ‘Cold Air’ as 17 minutes of beautifully self-contained calm for your day.
